Pete Gooding

Pete Gooding is a club DJ, music producer and radio presenter, but way beyond any name or title he’s a music fan. In fact, Pete is a Music Man. Thanks to his broad musical taste, deep musical knowledge and boundless energy and enthusiasm, he’s one of the lucky few who have managed to turn ‘what I love’ into ‘what I do’. Pete does music full time, full on, all the time.

“I always have loads of energy because I’m always getting over excited by music, I have the same love for it I had at 15 years old when I first went to Amnesia in 1989!”

Pete Gooding lives in Ibiza where this story begins. He fell in love with house music at the age of 12 after being given a cassette of The House Sound Of Chicago Volume One by his older (and naughtier) sister. The Gooding family were regular summer visitors to the party island of Ibiza. And in 1989, the same sister took Pete, then a sweet, impressionable 15 year old on his first clubbing adventure – to Amnesia.

It was a night that would set the course for his career, his love, his life. When Pete heard the DJ drop Lil Louis’ French Kiss he knew that he wanted to be up there one day, playing the tunes, at the heart of the party, making the world dance.
Back in the real world, the family home in Birmingham, England, the life, the dream, felt a million miles away. Undeterred, Pete started building something local, hope of going global with the music still burning strong.

He moved from glass collecting at a local club to running his own night there and booking some of those DJs who were already living the dream (Erick Morillo, Judge Jules and Dave Seaman were visitors). Then progressed to Rafael’s, the biggest bar in Birmingham, for more successful DJing and promoting and a few forays into the world of guest DJing for Moneypenny’s, down the road.

But Ibiza was still calling and in 1996, with a little help from old school friend Steve Lawler, Pete landed a career-defining residency at Cafe Mambo. He would return every summer for the next ten years, making a varied and well-received compilation CD each season and watching as the fortunes of Mambo rose, partly thanks to his eclectic music soundtracks, and it became the best known and best loved sunset bar on the island.

“I always have loads of energy because I’m always getting over excited by music, I have the same love for it I had at 15 years old when I first went to Amnesia in 1989!”